School-Age: Dung Beetles

Parents may not appreciate it but I have yet to meet a school-age kid that does not love (or at least find it funny) to talk about POOP. So this week we did just that and talked about the fabulous dung beetle!

1. Reading
For our book we read "Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle" by Cheryl Bardoe. 

It has age-appropriate facts about different varieties of dung beetles and is the perfect length for a read-aloud!

2. Activity
We had a small discussion to test their listening comprehension during the book. The kids asked so many questions during the read-aloud portion, though, that this was not an issue. The topic this week was a hit!

Our activity was a scat identification game. I shared a North American Mammal Scat identification sheet, if they were curious about identifying scat where they live. Then I shared a variety of different scat pictures to see if they could guess the animal. Some of the animals were also on the North American Mammal Scat sheet and some were not. The scat I showed were from a range of animals, from elephants and cows to foxes and owls. 

The kids LOVED this game even if it was a little gross.

3. Craft
I had the kids name another well-known insect that loves poop = the fly! Our craft was to make a fly out of Popsicle sticks, clothespins, and googly eyes. Ms. Carol found a similar craft on the Simply Crafty blog.  

Here are some of our examples: 

Notes:
As I said - the topic was a hit. The parents were amused (and a little grossed out) but all the kids were engaged and loved it! I would definitely do something similar again with scat identification, even if I changed the topic slightly, because it was fun!